


Gloria In Exelsis Deo (maybe the highest, but not-Heaven)

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Lucifer (Comic)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-24
Updated: 2008-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-25 03:44:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1629755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A day in the life of Elaine Belloc.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gloria In Exelsis Deo (maybe the highest, but not-Heaven)

**Author's Note:**

> This story is set after the conclusion of the comics.
> 
> Written for tussah

 

 

They don't call it Heaven. Or no one does to Elaine's face anyway. She doubts the angels who never rebelled do anything behind her back, and if the ones who found Lucifer a better proposition than her grandfather ever say the word _heaven_ aloud, Elaine doesn't care to find out. 

When she was dispersed throughout the myriad worlds of Creation, Elaine knew no time. There was only the endless now. How her time thusly would be measured by the clocks and charts of the worlds where sentient creatures dwell, she couldn't begin to say. She has no reason to say, because no one asks her questions like that. She hangs in not-Heaven because she feels oddly at home amid the impossible domes and minarets and wall-less rooms. 

Looking over the new city the angels built after the destruction of their Silver City, she has no thoughts about time, doesn't have to wonder over the fates of her friends and loved ones because she knows the exact seconds ticking by in Earth and in every pocket of reality as they flow by. She picked this now to manifest for the fickle reasons any god chooses what they choose: ones solely her own--in this particular case because she wants to watch the new Harry Potter movie in IMAX. 

Duma hovers behind her several steps. He's a worrier. 

Elaine doesn't so much _think_ anymore, she _is_. There is nothing but Elaine. All of creation dwells within her and without her simultaneously. 

Something Elaine hadn't anticipated--because after all she was once just a little girl and this whole being God thing is still new in comparison to infinity--is that the angels need tasks or they become unruly. They aren't all that good at coming up with their own tasks. They have grudges and misattribute her motivations to their own ends. Take for example this Gabriel situation.

"You didn't do anything wrong," Elaine spins and clutches at Duma's hands. He looks down where their skin touches and she can feel him vibrate. Her attention overwhelms him. She doesn't know how to comfort him about that because she _needs_ him. Sometimes she wonders if Lucifer's entire problem was that he needed in the same way she does and he was too prideful to admit it. 

Duma sort of radiates his feelings or ideas or whatever. Sometimes he talks directly to her mind or the minds of others, but not often. Right now he's sending out waves of frustration. He wants to be helpful, to make her way easier. Elaine's frustrated in return because she doesn't know how to explain herself to Duma. She might be falling into some bad habits--there's a family tendency to that so she thinks she can blame her genes if she has them--but she honestly feels _bad_ about her lack of perfection, something she can't say about her grandfather or her uncle. 

When she dissolved into creation, she'd set the angels individual tasks. She'd ordered them to focus on specific activities to keep them busy. She left Duma in charge. She's still getting the swing of the omnipotency thing, so she hadn't thought that through to it's logical conclusion--Duma's a keener and he blames himself for every mistake his flock made while she was one with all. 

"It's my job to blame myself, not yours." Duma's skin is hot, burning, like all the angels. He's beautiful. Everyone's beautiful to Elaine now, but the angels burn with the fire of original creation. Duma puts the Italian masters to shame, showing them up as the ignorant beasts they were in comparison to what they were trying to represent on canvas. "Want to come with me?" 

Duma's wings sweep up and around them, feather-like tendrils brushing her neck and legs. Duma radiates consent, humility, love, desire for approval. Elaine drops his hands and reaches out to embrace him. Okay, she flings herself on him and clutches him to her. She's still reacquainting herself with her body-- _a_ body anyway, this isn't the same one. Or the same as any of the ones she's had before. Duma feels solid against her, his wings hiding her like her mother's arms did when she ducked her face into her chest as a small child. The minutes spin out, creation creaks forward--birth, death, procreation, despair, hope--all of it dancing in the corner of her mind like a shopping list she continually subconsciously adds to. 

Duma radiates contentment.

*

When she set the angels their tasks she has to admit she did it rather randomly. Some of them drew lots. Some of them volunteered for tasks they found compelling. In the end, she'd left Gabriel on earth and hadn't disturbed his chosen path. Her grandfather withdrawing beyond creation had embittered Gabriel further than the alienation he'd felt when he fell to earth. Elaine blocks the thoughts of the created and uncreated. She doesn't want to overhear people's anxieties and desires. This goes X-infinity for the angels and demons and godlets and djinn and wraiths and uncreated. 

Elaine's current form is a construct of how she would have potentially looked at twenty if she lived in a chronology. Her hair falls thick and black against her shoulder blades. She has fringe because that's trendy in the current culture in this reality. She wears a black wrap dress and flip flops since Los Angeles is warm--and simply because she hasn't in so long. The feel of air on her toes, the smell of people around her, the brush of Duma's sleeve against her bare arm, all distract her from the soaring, creeping, straining life in Creation. Sensation is exhilarating. A smile pulls at her face and Duma smiles in return. His wings don't spill over into this realm and he's wearing jeans and a t-shirt, his hair pulled back in an elastic. He's having an interesting existence, she thinks to herself as they stroll into the dimly lit bar off Sunset. 

Elaine has turned off as much of who she is as possible. Her Will hovers on the other side of an invisible bubble. _Here_ she has the potential to reach in and grasp the great _I AM_ , but in the now she lives in this body, breath by breath, heartbeat by heartbeat. Duma thrums with wonder. Elaine knows the reason he was placed in Hell when Lucifer fucked off to earth, because Duma doesn't judge. He's neutral above all else. Other people's choices are their own and Duma has no opinion on that. Each life is lived discretely and under a volition not Duma's, so he leaves judgment for God. Or he did. Now he leaves judgment for Elaine. He has executive experience, so Elaine likes having him around to bounce ideas off of. He's also just so _Duma_ and that brings her joy. 

Los Angeles is both utterly known and completely foreign to Elaine. She knows the city from inside the molecules of exhaust fumes and collagen, but walking its streets feels fresh, something new. There's always something new for Elaine. She wonders if there will come a day when that will no longer be true. She likes it this way better. 

Gabriel was easy to find. Mostly because she is in theory omniscient after all. The old powers don't have much charity in their hearts for her. The bar hums with beings who would rather hide from her or kill her than have her in their space. She doesn't blame them. 

Elaine doesn't smile at the beings who glare at her, but only just barely. She thinks it's cute that they assume their animosity is anything to her besides entertainment or heartache. The club is set up with high walled booths in the middle and shadowed nooks along the walls. In the back is a dark and silent stage hung with a fluttering red curtain. There is no actual bar in the main room. Elaine places a hand on Duma's elbow and nudges him with a hip to circle around a clutch of curious people who look at her like they recognize her but can't recall from where. Duma looks at them with unblinking eyes that cause them to turn their eyes away, their appearances crumple in shame. 

"Don't do that," she hisses and tightens her fingers on his arm. Duma feels contrite. She sighs. "Don't do that either!" 

She's so absorbed with Duma's cycle of wanting to please and regret that she only tunes in to the figure approaching when Gabriel is adjusting his cuffs and looking at her from under his eyelashes. 

"Lord," he says and flicks his hair from his eyes. The room stills around them. "First there are rumors of Lucifer abroad once again, and now The Name walks amongst us. These are most thrilling times indeed." 

Gabriel has an attitude problem. That came about way before her grandfather bequeathed him a true reason for his anger--he thinks he should have had Elaine's job. Elaine would have once gladly handed him her burden, passed the cup so to speak, but now...she is more conflicted. Maybe micromanaging is a family trait. She can't trust anyone else with each precious life in Creation. Definitely not a hothead like Gabriel who smites first and asks questions later. 

Gabriel is beautiful in the same way all the angels are. He seems to bend light around him, a corona of _something_ that's beyond understanding. Not holiness, because Elaine doesn't believe in that concept and therefore it's not part of Creation, but even if it did exist Gabriel is anything but what some people would call holy. 

Gabriel disappears into the back wall and when Elaine follows she finds what appeared to be a wall is actually strings of black beads hanging from the ceiling. The other side of the room isn't in Los Angeles at all. She can feel the transition as it happens. Duma narrows his eyes and his arm falls so he can hold her hand. Elaine smiles. Her amusement bleeds over into Duma who dips his head and smiles in return. 

Gabriel looks over his shoulder and scowls. "Taken a consort, have we?" 

Gabriel's one of those bitter people who hates other people's happiness. Elaine pities him and wishes her grandfather hadn't capered off to leave his creations wandering blind in the wilderness for so long. Gabriel took her grandfather's silence personally. His dislike of Elaine is also personal. She can tell already that being here is pointless. 

The three of them stand next to a low counter of an old fashioned diner. Fluorescent light flickers over them, the shuddering light giving the place a sinister aspect. People eat pie and fried food around them, ignoring their sudden appearance. Elaine resists the urge to reach out through the building to know each soul around her, seen and unseen. She allows Gabriel to play this according to his own rules. She and Duma follow him to a booth. Once she sits down she looks out the plate glass window to see a snow covered sidewalk, people hustling passed with shoulders hunched against the wind, cars inching down the street with snow blowing through the beams cast by their headlights.

"Chicago," Gabriel says flicking his eyes towards the window. 

The waitress approaches and throws them a massive grin. "Aren't you a good-looking bunch!" She's wearing one of those waitress uniforms that Elaine had once thought only appeared in movies, pink with a white apron. She's young, sporting a name tag reading _Bobbi_. "Coffee?" 

"Do you think that God does not see the iniquity in your heart?" Gabriel turns on her and the girl rolls her eyes. 

"Religious nutjob, shoulda known. I'll bring you three coffees then." She taps three menus on the table, leaves them there and walks away with the air of someone who's seen it all and can't be bothered to care. 

Duma flings annoyance at Gabriel. He actually bothers to form mental words in his dissatisfaction. _Do not blaspheme._

"Oh please, just because you've turned apostate doesn't mean we all have." 

And this is a big part of the reason Elaine is here. She thought she could explain the new order to Gabriel and make him understand that smiting in the name of her grandfather is beyond pointless. She'd known in her heart all along that Gabriel's actions have nothing to do with a sense of misplaced righteousness on Gabriel's part. He's angry and punishing humans for existing, just like always. 

Elaine has come to see angelic interactions as sibling rivalry. Gabriel has spent his entire existence living in Michael and Lucifer's shadows, always the dutiful child who stayed home and never asked questions, never loved enough in his own mind, never rewarded for his vigilance. Elaine is the ultimate insult as far as Gabriel is concerned. 

_You were ever thus._ Duma mentally sighs. 

"Get the fuck out of my head," Gabriel snarls across the table. The college kids in the booth behind him collect their eggs and bacon and toast and scuttle to another table. 

"You can still come home, Gabriel." Elaine reaches a hand across the table and Gabriel pulls away from her. Sorrow rolls off Duma.

"My home was destroyed." Gabriel sounds as miserable as Duma feels. 

"We rebuilt it." Elaine knows this is futile, but she fights the lost cause and that's why she was chosen for her current life to begin with. "I love you." And she does. 

Gabriel laughs. Everyone in the diner stills and stares at him, some with a sudden, vital hope and some with sharp, abject trepidation. 

"You are nothing to me." 

He says it, but Elaine knows he's lying. Gabriel needs a center, he needs someone to worship. He needs a name in whom to act. Elaine fears Gabriel turning his agency in favor of one of the infernal powers. Lucifer wasn't the only angel to realize the truth of the myth of angelic free will. Elaine thinks Gabriel has grasped that he is the master of his own destiny now. With her grandfather absent from Creation, all is not known. The Plan has come unraveled--Elaine just holds the ends of the fraying tapestry and tries to knot it all back together. 

Elaine wants to convince Gabriel to come over to her side--she doesn't ask anyone for their worship or obedience. All the same, she doesn't want all the bother of Gabriel using his full powers in someone else's name. The fall out of Gabriel smiting in the name of something vile would be major, and Elaine has enough on her plate as it is. She can't control beings from beyond Creation. She could control Gabriel if she has to, but she'd just rather not. 

The waitress brings their coffee. She eyes Gabriel, but he just crosses his arms over his chest and stares out the window. 

"What kind of pie do you have?" Elaine asks with a smile. Bobbi rattles of an impressive list in a bored clip. "Rhubarb...I don't think I've ever had that." 

"Tastes like strawberry, kinda," Bobbi supplies.

 _What does strawberry taste like?_ Duma asks. He's chattier than usual. 

"We'll have a slice of that and the lemon and the banana cream, please." Elaine doesn't touch Bobbi's life to see if she sleeps well at night or if she has a peanut allergy, she leaves it alone completely because Elaine can get so wrapped up in one life that she forgets to pay attention to the big picture. 

"Your boyfriend's cute. Whatever Jesus crap this one's peddling, don't buy it." Bobbi points at Gabriel with a pencil. Elaine forgets how Americans are until she's directly confronted by them again--she wonders if her grandfather spent a lot of time in diners getting advice from waitresses when he was absent from the Throne. 

All three of them watch Bobbi behind the counter plating up pieces of pie."Americans are strange creatures," Gabriel threads his fingers together and lays them on the table top. 

Elaine doesn't know the music being piped through hidden speakers, but Bobbi and the college kids (that are now across the room) are all singing along. She wonders if she'd know the song if she'd never talked to her grandmothers. Duma moves closer to her on the bench. She could know the song, the lives of the band, the lives of their ancestors and decendents back to Eden Garden and into timelessness if she chose. She doesn't choose to.

Gabriel watches Elaine and Duma for several long seconds as Bobbi flips the three small plates onto their table. When she's gone again he pulls in a long breath. "You're allied with more than just the Host." There's a hint of a question there, but he already knows the answers he's pretending to ask. 

"All the old fights are over." Elaine has given this speech at least a billion times now. "I know who you don't want to work with, but he's not really..." She pauses because she doesn't like saying there are sides to pick, because there aren't. Her love for Lucifer is well known. He's her family, for one thing, but he is also the only person from whom she still seeks approval. Elaine took the keys to the kingdom, but when she is embodied she's still part human, a tiny sliver of being human anyway, and she falls back into human patterns of thinking. Part of Elaine's humanity is needing Lucifer to validate her. 

"You are his creature," Gabriel's shoulders fall. To a certain extent Gabriel is correct. In the same way that Gabriel hates Lucifer like one brother hates a more successful brother. They're all stuck with each other, stuck in their patterns, in their familial power struggle. Gabriel sees Elaine as the granddaughter who inherited the throne over his better claim. She has no idea how to deal with that. Gabriel is right, after all.

Gabriel's problem is that Lucifer ignores him and Gabriel's spent next to eternity with his hatred of Lucifer as his main reason for existence. Awkward. 

The rhubarb pie isn't like strawberry at all. It tastes weird. Duma tastes the banana pie and nearly knocks her over with a wave of bliss. 

Gabriel pokes his fork into the whipped cream on the top of the pie Duma is swiftly putting away. "Bananas are one of the simple pleasures humans take for granted." Gabriel takes a bite. 

Elaine almost laughs at Gabriel's relentlessly grumpy attitude. He must work hard to be so miserable when life constantly reminds him that Creation is full of rapture and beauty. 

The doors fly open and a clutch of exuberant drunks stumble in, full of high spirits and laughter. 

"It's not like I don't have forever to convince you." The noise from across the room covers Elaine's words. She suddenly realizes the discomfort she's feeling is the cold. She's freezing in her flip-flops and short sleeved dress. Duma radiates relief. He's cold, too, and didn't know what was wrong. Elaine slaps a hand on his shoulder. "Oh! This is your first time, isn't it?" He's never been to earth before. 

Gabriel watches them both with a neutral expression that holds just a hint of haughtiness. "You two aren't boring, I'll grant you that." He cuts a piece of the rhubarb pie and eats it. His expression sours. "This is vile." 

Duma sends out agreement. Clearly, rhubarb was one of her grandfather's mistakes.

*

Duma had gardening to tend to when they got back to not-Heaven. Elaine wanders from building to building inspecting odd gadgets and texts the angels have created. There's an entire library of the live histories of all vole-like creatures in all worlds, for example, kept by Muriel. She doesn't ask but she assumes she accidentally caused that whole weird scene. 

In a tower shaped like a the Platonic Ideal of a giant Russian dome, Elaine watches Raqib animatedly explaining video games to Leliel, his arms fly over his head and his wings flutter. Leliel looks skeptical. 

"But you have not yet said _why_ they would do this," Leliel interjects. 

Elaine misses Raqib's response because she's distracted by Duma speaking to her. _You must sustain your body._ Duma has to remind Elaine to eat most of the time. He care-takes her. She doesn't mind because it gives him something to do in between putting out the brush fires around the new City and gardening. Duma likes human food and she suspects he'd enjoy cooking as much as gardening. Elaine's a vegan now and she doesn't have the heart to tell Duma that he's missing out on a lot of the tastiest food because she tries to avoid all animal products, pie apparently an exception. 

He's hovering behind her with a plate of fruit. She opens her mouth to thank him when a feeling she doesn't recognize overwhelms her. She feels _something_ , not fear nor joy nor anger nor worry. Something new. 

"Well, well," his voice thunders through the room before his figure walks through the massive open doors of the hall. "I see you rebuilt." 

Elaine realizes the feeling cracking her open is completeness. A subtle anxiety, a hole in her she didn't realize she even had, is suddenly gone. Her comprehension of her grandfather increases fractionally. 

"You thought we wouldn't?" Elaine can't help the smile, can't help wanting to see an answering one on her uncle's face. 

Lucifer's wings dip to touch her face, and he _is_ smiling, as broadly as she's ever seen on his face. "Glad to see you back in this form." He does sound glad. "I was bored with your Buddhist phase." 

"Yeah, me, too. Besides, I wanted to see the new Harry Potter movie in IMAX." 

All of the angels in the hall gather at her back. Lucifer's eyes cut over them. He mimics a yawn. "Your pets aren't very well trained. Do you have a date for the film? I would love to accompany you." 

_Don't trust him._ Duma stands just behind her right shoulder.

Lucifer glances over the room and his eyes finally fall back on her face. "Doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, I'd thought we'd done something about that." He pauses dramatically. "How does that expression about assuming go?" 

Elaine rolls her eyes. "Let's go to the movie and you can doom and gloom at me later. Hope you don't mind if Duma comes, too? He's not been to the IMAX thing before." 

Elaine knows she's come a long way when Lucifer just shrugs and smirks at her. He even offers an elbow. She takes that as approval. She takes his very presence as approval. 

She's doing her best. If she reinvents the bad god wheel, she hopes she can dust herself off and try, try again. 

 


End file.
